Literature is not so much self-improvement as self-conversation, self-prayer: the experience of literature, he has said, "is the experience of an isolate and solipsising glory..
He was writing about becoming a man ... There's a lot of old man/young man symbolism that's a self-conversation .
In the self-effacing (and for the most part self-shielding) conversation that follows -- which includes tributes to Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, the Carter Family, the Mamas and the Papas, Dolly Parton and, of course, Gram Parsons -- words like "anathema" and "Wunderkind" surface naturally.
Yet in person Zhadan was a self-reflective conversation partner and a careful listener.
Those rare moments of self-initiated conversation were always about one of two subjects: suicide or love.
As a second best, Juan is determined to learn English; he notes down words from his rock songs, and engages tourists in interminable self-improving conversation.
Hashtags like "TCOT" and "TeaParty" become channels around which fellow activists and partisans can gather together and produce a self-sustaining conversation with a trending power on Twitter.
Iconoclasm had lost its purpose, being diminished to the proportions of a pretentious and obscure self-referencing conversation between unknown artists.
Hence, while the west conducts a self-congratulatory conversation on the subject, the rest of the world sees an emperor with no moral clothing.
Dissatisfied with the idea of a "seat at the table," Park uses social media to facilitate a self-contained conversation among Asian-Americans that does not require any explanation or translation of our shared cultural norms.
